Immortal Memory (For Robert Burns) Poem by John Beaton

The twenty-fifth of January,
1759 A.D.,
brings you into this world, a wee
and helpless bairn,
as Scotland's hope stands hopelessly:
Culloden's cairn.

You live on farms and grow up poor
in penuries that fast inure
men to the plough and stony moor
to scrape a living
from land few farmers can endure—
harsh, unforgiving.

And yet you find small ways to heed
the beauty of that land, to read
its books, its lines, its lore, its breed
of common people
buckled beneath the crushing creed
of laird and steeple.

Your nineteenth birthday—now you link
the joy of words, the work of drink;
you make Tarbolton Inn-mates think
in what you dub
to be a common man's—clink, clink—
debating club.

And you rebel, your sword the pen,
wielded with fiery acumen,
and beard the lions in their den—
the church and gentry—
in bold defense of working men,
their saint and sentry.

You raise the cotter's head up high,
compare drunk Tam to kings and try
false Holy Willie for his lie;
you claim the clan
of humans is ennobled by
the honest man.

Young women worship what you say
and lie with you in summer hay
then bear your brood the following May
when you can't stop
the cultivation then in play
for next year's crop.

So many loves to kiss, enthrall,
and catch as in your arms they fall—
you portion solace to them all
with vows in songs
that part of you, on some fair knoll,
to each belongs.

But in the end it's death you fight—
lost infants, loves, your body's blight—
and, as you do, you write and write
throughout your strife
and universalize the plight
of burning life.

No man can tether time or tide
so off on Tam's gray mare you ride
across Hell's barren countryside
where you compose
a song of hope and plant with pride
one red, red rose.

Rab, look at what you've left behind—
a nation's heritage defined
by peopled landscapes of the mind;
we laud your birth
as yet your old Scots verses bind
the world's worth.